What does it take to ruin a game for you?

babinro

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babinro said:
Poor pacing (grind).
This has gradually become my number one deal breaker in any game followed closely by poor controls.

What do I mean by poor pacing?
Just about anything that feels like it's actively exists to waste my time while adding little or nothing to the experience. The genres most infamous with this are MMO's and traditional RPG's.

- Does your game require me to fight through waves of monsters for 10-20 minutes to reach a quest location, have 5-20 minutes of fun and then backtrack 10-20 minutes through monsters again to cash this quest in? I'm done.

- Does your game use a mount system but then expands the maps so that your increase in speed is meaningless? I'm done.

- Does your game require a significant amount of returning to town and wading through load screens to do the same menial task over and over again? I'm done.

- Do I have to spend minutes sprawling through large towns to complete routine tasks like selling gear? I'm done.

- Do I have grind out monsters for levels in the same zone for hours in order to proceed forward? I'm done.

You'd think all of this would mean that I hate RPG's and yet that's far from the truth. I LOVE the genre...it's just bitter sweet. I frequently feel like I'm spending over 50% of my play time getting ready to have fun. Programmers need to learn to institute movie style CUTS in their game.

- Want to sell gear while in a dungeon?
CUT to shop, leave shop and CUT back to your place in the dungeon. There's ZERO reason to force backtracking on the player. Better yet, simply let us sell gear through inventory screen. It's implied that you sold it to a merchant...skip the loading screens altogether.

- Complete a quest? CUT to quest completion dialogue/scene the CUT back to your place in the world.
Why do I need to watch the character walk back to town/fast travel back to town then walk through the town to find the quest giver?

So on and so fourth.

I'd make the absolute greatest RPG game ever by the way.
It'd only be 10 hours long because of all the cuts but the experience would be amazing :p

Gundam GP01 said:
As an RPG fan myself, I feel that most of your changes would ruin an RPG for me.

What you seem to be describing just seems to either be just one big ass dungeon with random dialogue breaks, or Final Fantasy XIII, but with random shitty cutscenes every 20 minutes that dont even advance the story.

One of my favorite aspects of RPGS, J and W alike, is the continuity of the world. I love it when a world feels like a single, coherent and complete whole. Even if it doesn't feel completely real, like in most JRPGs, it still feels like a believable whole.

Ideas like "Oh, just sell your shit in the inventory screen no matter where you are," and "Just have a short cutscene the moment you do whatever the quest tells you and teleport you right back to where you were standing afterwards" just completely rob the world of a sense of continuity and be believability.

Basically, I think the game you described isn't an RPG, it's a linear action game with RPG elements and combat.
It's funny you mention that because FF13 is both spot on and terrible. It's a great example of removing a lot of the tedious grind from the experience and focusing on the gameplay while pushing forward in the world. My ideal rpg would largely emulate that feel though without enforcing the strict corridors or removing freedom of exploration.

Remember, my goal is strictly about reducing senseless backtracking/wasted time.

Perhaps the act of fast traveling to a town and then running to the same guild master for 15th time continues to enthrall you in Skyrim/Oblivion but I felt that got old REALLY quickly.

Maybe you found working with encumbrance and the decision to return to town mid-dungeon added to your RPG tactical experience. I personally felt it was a massive waste of time. In fact, buying the PC version and using the command console/mods to all but remove encumbrance improved the game experience tenfold for me without taking me out of the world. This is the kind of respect for the players free time that I'd want to infuse into a game.
 

OpticalJunction

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Jul 1, 2011
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Bad gameplay mechanics are #1, I just can't enjoy a game if half the time I'm struggling with the controls.

Long loading times that go over 20 seconds or so.

Bugs. Constant crashes. Minor bugs I can overlook though, but if it's obvious the game is still in "beta" stages, it ruins it for me.

Grinding in any game other than an MMO.

Games which have heavy sexist, political or racial overtones, unless they're relevant to the story somehow.

PC games that are obvious console ports, and WITHOUT the option to use a controller.

This one doesn't ruin the game for me, but it does kill replay value : Lame endings. Games that conclude without rounding anything up, or have a ridiculous and unsatisfying boss fight.
 

Bob_McMillan

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Happyninja42 said:
Bob_McMillan said:
Kinda ashamed to admit this but... Difficulty. I stopped playing Deus Ex, Battlefield 3, and Rainbow Six because dying more than a dozen times in the first level isn't anywhere near fun.

Another would be too much realism. Syndicate was a 'meh' enough game, but the motion blur, weapon sway, all the weird little movements your character would make, and the basically one color levels strained my eyes and made me quit the game.
That one's usually easy to fix thankfully, as most games have easier difficulties than the default "Normal"
Yeeeaaahhhhh, so I was actually kinda already playing on easy...

Also, it feels like cheating to not be on Normal.
 

Chaos Isaac

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Poor Storyline. (Looking at you Final Fantasy XIII-2&3. Tales of Graces.)
Bad gameplay/controls. (Looking at you Aliens:Isolation. Bulletstorm.)
Random, bullshit crashing. (Looking at you, every PC game ever.)
 

aozgolo

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-Lack of reward for doing common tasks.

I hate when games have hoards upon hoards of enemies to kill and killing hundreds of enemies gets you... nothing! Not every game needs experience and level ups or even skill gains, but rewarding the effort put into a challenge whether that challenge is just the number of enemies you have killed or killing an especially hard one, it should be worth it. Even if it's just a weapon upgrade, give me something to make me want to kill these enemies!

-Reaching a cap before the game is half-over.

More specifically I mean MONEY caps, Experience caps are usually paced properly enough that only grinders will hit the cap before mid-game. The economy in games however I often see left woefully undernourished. This happens in literally every Zelda game I've ever played, eventually you completely run out of anything to buy, there are no more upgrades, no new items, and the enemies drop enough bombs, hearts, and arrows to make even replenishment items worthless. Show me a Zelda fan who hasn't hit the 999 Rupee cap in a game and I'll show you a liar.

-100% Random Loot.

When a game with tiered progression always randomizes your reward or specifically tailors the reward to your skill level ensuring you will have to upgrade again, yeah that annoys me.

-Inventory Tetris

I'm cool with weight limits, stack limits, or even slot limits, but forcing me to spend unnecessary time arranging large items in my bag around in such a way to fit one more scroll in is one of those classic examples of why realism does not always equal better gameplay.

-Multiplayer Focus

I've got nothing against multiplayer, but I prefer games where the meat of the game is designed to be able to be enjoyed by a single player. Locking content, or making a game so difficult as to discourage solo play is not my cup of tea at all.

-Terrible GUI

If I have to keep my eye on two different things on opposite corners of the screen simultaneously, then no thank you! I also dislike games where I spend 90% of my time watching tiny little aspects of the GUI instead of the main game and actually enjoying the graphics and animation.

-Short

A personal preference, I want bang for my buck and I appreciate games that can boast over 20 hours of gameplay, especially if there's high replay value involved. This is part of the reason why some critically acclaimed games I have no interest in, they are simply way too short for me to want to bother with.

-Text-heavy Story

I love when there's lots of supplementary text in a game, from in-game books, codex, etc. like in Skyrim, Mass Effect, or Final Fantasy XII, but what I can't stand are RPGs that frequently throw incredibly wordy long winded texts at you as main story beats. When the first thing I see when starting a new game is 90% of my screen filled with 10pt text that's going to take me 5+ minutes to read through, I consider that bad game design for modern titles. It's great as an opt-in sort of thing but tell your story through in-game action, cutscenes, or brief dialogue, not with hiding a novel in it.
 

SweetShark

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Playing a game even I know what will happen next because of a f*gtard spoiling to me the ending....
However this don't apply always if:
-The story isn't so interesting. [New Mortal Kombat]
-It is TOO obvious who is the big "bad" in the game. [Alice Madness Returns]
 

Jandau

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Dec 19, 2008
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Annoyance.

If a game has annoying mechanics, it can totally drive me away from playing it. For instance, in another thread recently I mentioned Detective mode from the Arkham games - I hated it. I felt I needed to keep it on all the time to avoid missing things, but at the same time it made the game ugly. I liked the game besides that, but that aspect kept grating on my nerves until I gave up on Arkham Asylum (and in turn, on subsequent Arkham games).

I don't have that much time (or energy) to game anymore, so I don't like it if I feel a game is wasting my time. I don't mind long games or hard games, I just hate feeling like I'm being jerked around.
 

rook119

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A couple games that should have been great ruined by a flaw or 2.

Skies of Arcadia (DC version) - The lesson being don't take the most appealing aspect of a game (treasure hunting/exploring) and make it a horrible controller throwing grind. Damn I so wanted to love this game. The overworld was so beautiful I wanted to explore every bit of it. The characters were blue skies in games Sega likable and fun. Unfortunately it had random battles, and while that isn't a deal breaker, it had horribly oppressive random battle loading times. I just remember quitting after I had to find this particular pillar and getting beat down by all the overworld random battle loading times.

Persona 2 - the graphics, storyline, music, characters all would have made a great game (hell I watched the story on youtube, it has one of the great underrated endings). The random battles, the random difficulty spikes, the dungeons that you can easily get lost in and that have a time limit broke me.
 

happyninja42

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Bob_McMillan said:
Happyninja42 said:
Bob_McMillan said:
Kinda ashamed to admit this but... Difficulty. I stopped playing Deus Ex, Battlefield 3, and Rainbow Six because dying more than a dozen times in the first level isn't anywhere near fun.

Another would be too much realism. Syndicate was a 'meh' enough game, but the motion blur, weapon sway, all the weird little movements your character would make, and the basically one color levels strained my eyes and made me quit the game.
That one's usually easy to fix thankfully, as most games have easier difficulties than the default "Normal"
Yeeeaaahhhhh, so I was actually kinda already playing on easy...

Also, it feels like cheating to not be on Normal.
Meh, it's not cheating if the game is designed to allow that type of gameplay. You're not under any obligation to the gaming community to play the game on Normal mode. xD It's your damn game, that you paid money for, play it how you want. xD
 

KarmaTheAlligator

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Bad controls and a reliance on the physics engine for puzzles, making the solution luck based instead of skill or intelligence based. Random loot comes in as well, but that's not as big of an issue since I'll usually find a way around it.
 

ZippyDSMlee

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I can take nearly anything story wise but if the game play/mechanics is bad or tedious I lose it.(most RPGs tend to have mediocre or worse mechanics with alot of tedium,god I miss the days of game shark and code breaker that made most games fun...)
 

ZippyDSMlee

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KarmaTheAlligator said:
Bad controls and a reliance on the physics engine for puzzles, making the solution luck based instead of skill or intelligence based. Random loot comes in as well, but that's not as big of an issue since I'll usually find a way around it.
I love random loot I'd much rather have it with a chance to get better equipment randomly than have static equip like Skyrim and go through them all in a few hours and not even get to the middle of the game....

But at the end of the day they have have the option to choose which loot system you want one would be you get less loot but most of it is mid to high level based on location and your level the other is typical random generation where you get alot of loot but most of it is lower quality but you have a chance to get the random higher quality stuff(based on location and your level) than the other setting that's based on lower quantity of higher quality items.
 

sageoftruth

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Too much repetition and no sense of progress.

If I feel like I've experienced everything the game has to offer already I won't play further. I tried Sleeping Dogs and enjoyed it for a period of time, but I soon realized that everything I was doing was the same variation of stuff I had been doing earlier, and it wasn't exactly challenging, so I dropped it and never picked it up again.

I like games to make me think, challenge my mastery of the controls or both.
 

evenest

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For my part, THE thing that kills my enjoyment of a game is an unclear and/or unfair fail-state. If you really want to get my blood boiling to the point where I would sell the game (or destroy it), add to that a restart at the very beginning of that sequence, especially where it is a long sequence or section. For examples, you can look to just about any Ubisoft game. Most recently, I had my joy for LittleBigPlanet 3 destroyed when a fail on the third character's route forced me to restart from the first character's route. Not fair and not cool.
 

DSD12

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Bad main protagonist is what ruins games for me, there is a difference between having an unlikable main character for a legit story based reason and them JUST being an unlikable person. Whole reason I dropped Far Cry 3 was because Jason was the WORST character ever and even when he "supposedly" gets tougher he is still an asshole to his friends.
 

FC Groningen

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- Poor controls or just controls I can't seem to grasp. For example, I've always had issues on playing on a playstation, just because I grew up with a Nintendo controler and couldn't adapt back at a younger age.

- Bad plot/story line. Same goes for unlikable or stereotypical characters. It's what made "The Walking Dead" for me and what destroyed "Uncharted" for me.

- A Game starts to feel like work. Feeling you fall in a routine or a grind. Good examples here are Sims games or the bad kind of RPG's.
 

Azure23

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You know how RE 6 had a bunch of sequences with poorly explained- new- mechanics that all had insta death conditions? that pretty much ruined he game for me, and I LIKE the dumb fun of RE 4-5.

One in particular that pissed me off was at the end of Chris and Piers' campaign, you were running away from some poorly designed giant monster in a big circular shaft, and the thing would just arbitrarily insta kill us (my fiancé and I have played all the co op resident evil games together). Sometimes I'd be in the front, running along fine, then all of a sudden get a death scene where I'm flung from the platform, sometimes she'd get killed even though graphically the monster was tearing up platforms twenty feet behind us. Eventually we figured that the monster's actions were leashed to where Chris was so we'd have to do everything in perfect sync and if I got a little ahead, done, start over. I fucking hated that part, totally killed any sense of pacing that it may have had. I say May because in general that game had abysmal pacing.

Whatever, at least Jake and Sherry's campaign was fun, except for the fucking snowmobile part. Those controlled like a fucking three legged rhino.
 

JohnnyDelRay

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Casual Shinji said:
Bad enemy placements/the inability to anticipate enemy attacks.

Max Payne 3 suffered from this horrendously (among other things). Enemies were such a crack shot that the second you caught sight of one, they would've already fired a shot taking away half your health.
I agree with this to a point, but I found Max Payne 3 surprisingly realistic. OK it was annoying after awhile, I still stuck with it and enjoyed it once I was onto the flow of things, but in an actual gunfight, that is how quick people react, especially when they're life depends on it. I realized this to be the case, especially after a few games of airsoft. Apart from the popping painkillers every time you get shot, of course!

OT:
I don't really like too much grinding per level, and exponential leveling requirements. Although I did quite a bit in Diablo II, after awhile it just gets ridiculously repetitive, and after you've been playing the same character with the same skillset for 40+ hours and not getting anywhere, I quite easily put the game down.

Another thing that gets me is having to repeat long sections, and/or unskippable cutscenes due to poor save point placement or otherwise just bad level design. This is why I dropped both Dead Rising games, despite them being fun on every other front.

Yeah, controls put me off too, I don't know I seemed to be much more tolerant of it in my younger days, but now I just don't feel like I pick them up as quick as I used to, and thus don't put in the effort if they're not well thought out. I don't mean using a different button to reload, I mean really clunky, awkward playstyles (like when I tried to replay RE4, and found I just couldn't aim with the left stick anymore).
 

Imperioratorex Caprae

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May 15, 2010
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Bugs that totally break immersion or poorly thought out mechanics that make games either unplayable or instant rage quit bullshit AI.